Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus wants to protect an estate tax reduction from any deal averting the fiscal cliff, according to his hometown newspaper.

Baucus told the Great Falls Tribune in an interview Sunday that he wants to keep the Bush-era rate for estate taxes in order to protect ranchers and farmers who pass their properties on to their children.

“…Baucus is working to preserve a reduction in estate taxes that exempts the first $5 million of an estate’s value for individuals and taxes the remainder at 35 percent,” the paper wrote, but didn’t include direct quotes from Baucus on the topic.

“Couples can combine their exemptions to total $10 million. They also can give away an estate and face similarly lower gift taxes. Those tax cuts, which help farmers and ranchers pass their agriculture assets on to their children, expire at the end of 2012. Without action by Congress, only the first $1 million of an estate will be exempt from taxes, and everything over that will be taxed at 55 percent.”

The Senator also told the paper he wanted to maintain a wind production tax credit, which has helped create almost 2,000 jobs in his state.